PCG Connect

Mel Renfrow: 00:02

Welcome to Inside Out, our newest series where we take a deep dive look at performance contracting services and product lines. We'll be talking to the movers and shakers of performance contracting, the folks who make the big deals and then bring those big deals to life. So with that, let's get to it. I wanna welcome everyone here today. We are going to do a deep dive.

Mel Renfrow: 00:24

We're starting a new series where we're going to be, doing a deep dive into the various product lines that, we have here at PCI. So we did during the one PCG series, we did one on, product lines that Ron Stafford and Rick Suttfun came in and talked, and it was actually one of the most listened to podcasts. So what's really cool is you have people that have worked here a long time and people that have been in the construction industry that really, know specific product lines, but maybe not others. And then you have people like here at corporate, This is their first exposure to the construction industry. So it's just a really good way for us to educate ourselves.

Mel Renfrow: 01:07

And, so we're gonna start off. I'm very excited. We're starting off with, Scaffold. And so we have here in the studio with us, mister Dean Courser, who's an operations manager out in Seattle. Hello, Dean.

Dean Courser: 01:20

Hello.

Mel Renfrow: 01:21

And then also, we have Tim Long here, who is a senior estimator in our Houston branch. So welcome, Tim.

Tim Long: 01:28

Hello.

Mel Renfrow: 01:29

So you're actually in town. We're we're having a scaffold, product line summit this week. So why don't you tell us I'm gonna start with you, Dean. Why don't you give a little bit of a background? I know you started here, what was it, 2011?

Dean Courser: 01:44

That's correct. 2011.

Mel Renfrow: 01:46

12 years here, but, something tells me this wasn't the first time you did scaffolding. So how did how did what's your background? Where are you from? And then how did you get into the, industry?

Dean Courser: 01:57

Well, I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I was a garbage man till I was about, 29. And I met a young lady, that was the daughter of Dale Middleton, who was the cofounder of Ivy High Lift.

Mel Renfrow: 02:13

Oh, okay.

Dean Courser: 02:13

And on the West Coast. And, I, we got married. And, I wish that had been a little bit better. But at the end of the day, I will move to Tacoma in 1989, and we started up Scaffold in the Tacoma branch. And, you know, we already had a little something going in Seattle.

Dean Courser: 02:33

And so I've been doing it for about 34 years. Ivy High Lift, Sunbelt bought them in 2000. We worked at Sunbelt for about 5 years. And then, in 2005, Thyssenkrupp Safeway

Mel Renfrow: 02:47

Okay.

Dean Courser: 02:47

Bought Sunbelt, so just transferred hard hats. And then in 2010, during the downturn, I was let go. I'd been there a long time. I was, you know, probably making a little bit more money than some, and so they let me go. And, you know, a bunch of people at PCI had talked to me for several years about, hey, you know, we'd like to get staff to come in and or going in Seattle area.

Dean Courser: 03:15

And, the rest is kinda history. They, you know, handed me a laptop and said, can you get it going? And we have.

Mel Renfrow: 03:23

Here you go. So who is what was your first exposure, to PCI and your first, I guess, contact that you had?

Dean Courser: 03:30

Well, I mean, Kirk Baker and I worked together for many, many years. I worked with almost all the interiors guys

Mel Renfrow: 03:40

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 03:40

At, you know, Fort Lewis, Banger, lot lots of jobs throughout the area. And so I'd known them on and off. And, you know, Kirk was the one that was really instrumental and, you know, talked me into coming over. And then Daryl Bailey is actually the one that hired me at the end. So Okay.

Dean Courser: 04:01

It's been I wish I'd been here, 25 years earlier. So

Mel Renfrow: 04:05

Us too. Yeah. Us too. So how did you get, when you first after you left, when you first got into the business, like, what positions did you hold? Did you ever work in the field, or did you go straight into the office?

Dean Courser: 04:18

Absolutely. So being honest with you, I was, I was the the yard kid. Yeah. And so I swept floors and stocked the frames. We had a loading dock, and it was my job to to make sure as the as the crews came in that, you know, the trucks were unloaded and reloaded.

Dean Courser: 04:35

And, you know, I did that for about a year. And I was with, really one of the best Scafell guys I've ever known. I owe him a lot for teaching me. And he said, hey. I think you can do more.

Dean Courser: 04:48

So ended up, you know, kind of moving to inside sales, taking care of rental customers and stuff as they came in. And, couple years later, we joined the Seattle and Tacoma branch, and we went to Kent. And I became operations manager there. I was inside sales and did operations manager under one other manager. And, about 95, when Dale retired, they asked me if I wanted to do sales.

Dean Courser: 05:20

And I said, sure. So went out and did sales for, I don't know, still doing it Yeah. Ever since. So lots lots of lots of history, lots of experience with looking at jobs, but started at the bottom and worked my way up.

Mel Renfrow: 05:37

Yeah. I I love that about our company. There's so many people that have a similar story, and I also like you had somebody that saw something in you and

Dean Courser: 05:45

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 05:46

Yeah, gave you the opportunity.

Dean Courser: 05:48

Oh, him a lot.

Mel Renfrow: 05:49

Yeah. What was their what was their name?

Dean Courser: 05:51

Dale Middleton, and he he taught me a lot about what I know about estimating. And and, frankly, what we do now is a hybrid of what he taught me 30 years ago. I mean, for the way that I look at Scaffold jobs and and, estimate bid. Of course, we have better tools now. You know, I I'm still out there with a hammer and a chisel.

Dean Courser: 06:13

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 06:13

The abacus. Yeah.

Dean Courser: 06:16

And he he he taught me a lot. Thankful for it.

Mel Renfrow: 06:19

Well, very cool.

Dean Courser: 06:20

And then, you know, I mean, real quickly, I know we only have a certain amount of time, but once I got to BCI, you know, it was a little slow going. But I'll never forget the first job we did, which was, for Darren Watts at PAS. And, we went down to Albany, Oregon and helped him take down a paper mill.

Mel Renfrow: 06:41

Okay.

Dean Courser: 06:42

We got our 1st load of scaffold from Atlanta. I told you this story, Tim. And, I had never used Cuplock. We were all had used different varieties of scaffolds.

Mel Renfrow: 06:52

That a specific brand that maybe is a little different? Okay.

Dean Courser: 06:56

It's what we have for our system scaffold.

Mel Renfrow: 06:58

Okay.

Dean Courser: 06:59

And so we've been used to using ring lock or Safeway systems or another type of brand. So all that said, we got our 1st truckload. It it arrived at Albany, and then we got another one right after that. It was about a 2 semi load job to start with. And I we knew nothing about this scaffold other than, hey.

Dean Courser: 07:19

It's scaffold. Mhmm. I'll never forget. We I was there with the crew, 2 guys that still work for us. And, you know, we got the side brackets, and I remember calling down to Atlanta to to ask, Mike junior.

Dean Courser: 07:34

Hey. Where's the post? Well, with Cuploc, there's an adapter that goes on the post. We didn't we didn't have those. We didn't order.

Dean Courser: 07:44

Oh. So, you know, we were we were, improvising tube and clamp and all kinds of stuff. But, you know, everything's been great. People have helped me the whole way through. I feel fortunate.

Dean Courser: 07:55

And, you know, there's been a lot of opportunities, it's you can you can get as much out as you give.

Mel Renfrow: 08:02

Yeah. Well, let's let's I wanna switch over to Tim because you, Dean, you know, you were kind of the first exposure to the West Coast Yes. But the OG here, when when we got when we very first got into scaffolding was in 2,007, and that was through an acquisition of scaffolding was in 2,007, and that was through an acquisition. And Tim came to us through the acquisition. So why don't why don't you introduce yourself and kind of a little bit about that company?

Mel Renfrow: 08:24

Sure. Much like Dean,

Tim Long: 08:31

I started out in the field as well. Worked, with 3 brothers and my stepfather in a scaffold on a family scaffold business called Scaffold Concepts. Prior to Scaffold Concepts, my stepdad had owned another scaffold business called Scaffold Rental and Erection. And I always say that my brothers and I were cheap labor, and so we pretty much, some instances, we didn't really have a choice. We worked on our we worked on weekends.

Tim Long: 08:55

We worked during our summer breaks and junior high and high school all the way through college. In 1999, my stepfather sold the company to Brand Scaffold. So all the whole family went to go work for Brand Scaffold. At that time, Brand we had a Nashville division, and Brand had a position open. It wasn't with the family aspect of the business, but I went interviewed for it.

Tim Long: 09:21

And at 22, that's really where I started my scaffold estimating and sales career was with Brand Scaffold in Nashville.

Mel Renfrow: 09:28

So you moved from Atlanta.

Tim Long: 09:29

I did. I moved I'm sorry. And I moved so I moved from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee. Lived there for about 4 years. To make a long story short, it wasn't much fun working for Brand, and we left the company and started our own scaffold company again, which was Scaffold Concepts.

Tim Long: 09:48

So I was reunited with my family after a couple years, and it was the first time I ever got a chance to work with family, which is pretty interesting in itself.

Mel Renfrow: 09:55

Yeah.

Tim Long: 09:55

But I enjoyed that. That's a whole other podcast. Right? It's a whole other podcast therapy session. No.

Tim Long: 10:01

My family's great. I've got some, great brothers. But we we developed a really good team, and the company grew very quickly. So that by 2007, I don't remember the exact revenue, line, but may we were somewhere in the 16, $17,000,000 range, which is very quick in 3 or 4 years. We developed a really good team.

Tim Long: 10:20

A lot of that team is still with PCI today, scattered through different branches. And I think Mark Batchel can probably be credited with initiating the talks of purchasing Scaffold concepts. But along with Mark and, Glenn Frey, Walt Eskaberg, I think, that they saw some potential, in bringing on a Scaffold company and growing it. At the time, I believe the main motivation for that was that PCI was probably our largest customer at the time along with Southern Company, and TVA. So we're working in a lot of the same facilities along PCI.

Tim Long: 10:59

And then in a lot of instances, we were working direct, subcontracted to PCI. I wouldn't be surprised that we're probably their biggest spend at the time besides insulation materials. I think I've heard that somewhere before during that year, 2007. And I think, Mark, the I I heard one time he said, to Mike Thompson that, hey. I think it's just cheaper to buy you guys, you know, than to keep subcontracting to you.

Mel Renfrow: 11:24

I'd heard that story

Tim Long: 11:25

too. So, yeah, you know, I'm paraphrasing. But, anyway, that's kinda how things started and how I got to PCI in 2010. So I worked in PCI Atlanta from 2007 to 2010 in both the commercial and industrial markets as an estimator. In 2010, an opera an opportunity arose in Houston.

Tim Long: 11:47

We were doing a lot of JV projects with Houston, so we're doing a lot of boiler scaffolds in the NRG system. And we had this huge scaffold project at JW Turk, which at the time was probably the it may be the largest scaffold project we've ever performed at PCI. It's about a $22,000,000 job. And I had a lot to do with the estimating, and a little bit of the operational kickoff of that project, but we were doing it in joint venture with, Mike Smith and Tim Lampard out of Houston because it was in Texarkana, Texas. During that time, Brand was PCI's subcontractor.

Tim Long: 12:20

PCI Houston was subcontracting several $1,000,000 worth of work to Brand Scaffold. And Brand had a few incidents, which made it not survivable for either Brand or PCI to partner any longer and to maintain, a significant contract at the time, which was the NRG contract. So there was an immediate opportunity in Houston to self perform scaffold services. Yeah. And it fit right in with the idea of buying, scaffold concepts, integrating them into PCI, and then growing the Scaffold product line within PCI.

Tim Long: 12:55

So, I was, you know, I'm proud to say I was part of that initial expansion, by coming to Houston. So in in Houston, the 1st couple years, we just spent operationally getting our arms around, you know, a 7,000,000, $8,000,000 scaffold business that we were now gonna self perform within NRG and a $22,000,000 scaffold job we're doing in Turks. So there wasn't a whole lot of growing anything or going out and expanding the the market. We were really operationally just trying to get our arms wrapped around what we had.

Mel Renfrow: 13:25

Just trying to keep your head above water.

Tim Long: 13:27

Keep people safe, execute, and maintain our our customers. So for the 1st couple years in Houston, it was really operationally driven. Somewhere 2012, 13, we started, there were other avenues to grow the business, so we started getting out into the petrochemical market.

Mel Renfrow: 13:45

What is that? Explain that for people.

Tim Long: 13:47

So the petrochemical world would be, you know, plants, or so refining, petrochemical, that process. As far as the petrochemical plants are usually using products that are byproducts of the refining industry, and they're creating things like plastics, you know, things that you where you make milk jugs, water bottles would be the final product. I'm sorry. I'll let that up to speed on all the proper nomenclature. But so we started expanding, because because Houston is, it's it's like the center of the universe for refineries and petrochemical facilities.

Tim Long: 14:21

So it was an obvious area of growth. We're really industrially driven, industrially focused at the time, so it's a natural area to expand our business. And considering we were we were doing 1 PCG in Houston before there was 1 PCG, you know.

Mel Renfrow: 14:37

I was just getting ready to say that. Yeah.

Tim Long: 14:39

So we're performing, scaffold insulation coatings, fireproofing, abatement, all those product lines all under one roof. And scaffolding, a lot of times, as you expand the petrochemical market, is really just another component of our contract. A lot of times when we're doing CUI projects that might include scaffold insulation coating, scaffold, it'd be 30 to 50% of that contract value. So as much as you're trying to promote scaffolding in the petrochemical and refinery market, you're really promoting everything.

Mel Renfrow: 15:14

Sure.

Tim Long: 15:15

And scaffold just being one component of that. One thing I'll go back back to as far as the acquisition, I think one of the motivating factors behind the acquisition too was bundling services. I think that's obvious.

Mel Renfrow: 15:27

It's kind of visionary. Like you said, it was the precursor to 1 PCG.

Tim Long: 15:31

It was. Yeah. And so in Houston, that's what we do a lot of, is we bundle our services all under one roof. We have 4, I think, now defined different branches, plus the abatement branch, and we really operate as one. We're all incentivized to do that together for more than just the stock.

Tim Long: 15:52

Sure. We've got some incentive programs, for us to work together that are within the branch. But to make a long story short, I've been in Houston since, 2010. Been with PCI for 15 and a half years, and majority of that now has been in Houston, and not Atlanta, which, you know, a lot of folks that's that's where they, recognize me being from. But been a Houston guy for, you know, 13 years now.

Mel Renfrow: 16:17

Yeah.

Tim Long: 16:17

And it's been a great opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity to expand my horizons to not just be pigeonholed into scaffolding, and I kinda grasped that and ran with it. I'm responsible for developing a lot of other business opportunities within our branch, and scaffold is just a piece of that. And then our branch still relies on me to be the scaffold expert, to be involved in the bids, to approve the bids, for other estimators. A lot of times, I'm driving those, but I'm also, you know, maintaining a key customer base supporting some of these other product lines as well.

Tim Long: 16:53

So I just wanna mention that because I think Houston's a little unique, or my role there is a little unique compared to some of our other, scaffold branches that, have traditionally been, scaffold specific.

Mel Renfrow: 17:05

Yeah. Well, let's go into I have a so you've kinda touched on some of this already with industrial, petrochemical, all that. What are the, the different types of projects, I guess, like the different categories like that? So for example, on the drywall, we have hospitals, all, you know, clean rooms, all of this. So what are the kind of different categories for scaffolding?

Dean Courser: 17:27

In Seattle, we do, and and really the whole West Coast. So I I don't know if you want me to launch into it, but I I help out quite a bit on the West Coast and had a lot to do with the Bay Area and Portland startup. And

Mel Renfrow: 17:39

Get into it.

Dean Courser: 17:40

We, you know, we do a largely commercial base. We'd have a lot of industrial. I'd say it's maybe 75, 25.

Mel Renfrow: 17:49

So what's the difference? What is the difference just between commercial and industrial as an example?

Dean Courser: 17:55

So commercially, you know, we do everything the same thing that our interior's brother do. We do lots of hospitals, schools, high rises. You name it, we do it. And in in in those markets, we're we're doing a lot more than variety. We're very diverse.

Dean Courser: 18:15

So we do shoring, reshoring, HACU roof system, which is a big aluminum truss roof that can actually be built like a gable, and then panelized or shrink wrapped for weather enclosure. We do tons of shrink-wrap, suspended stages, which, most people call swing stages.

Mel Renfrow: 18:34

So that that's where they can kind of move it around.

Dean Courser: 18:38

It's, it's where we usually put beams or rigging on the roof, and it could be several different kinds. There could be sockets and davits, which are fixed that we can hang off from. But most normal for us is beams, weights, and dollies, cable drops, and then maybe a 30 or 40 foot, 20 foot aluminum stage with motors that elevates up and down the sides.

Tim Long: 19:01

Think of a winder window Yeah. Window washer. Winder washer. Winder washer. Winder washer.

Mel Renfrow: 19:07

How long were you in Knoxville?

Tim Long: 19:08

Yeah. Yeah. One job. Yeah.

Dean Courser: 19:13

But yeah. So we do a lot of that, on on and on. I mean, we'll do anything that we can safely do efficiently to make money. We don't pass anything. So there's a there's quite a few other things we could go into, but we do frame embrace.

Dean Courser: 19:30

What's up? Okay. So those would be the what you see on a lot of exteriors of buildings, especially on the West Coast. You know, they look essentially like a horseshoe because it's a walk through frame, and they're stacked up.

Mel Renfrow: 19:43

Okay.

Dean Courser: 19:43

And we plank that, and that's typically on the exteriors of buildings. We do do it inside where it makes sense for dance floors, which is a big deck. So maybe the interiors guys can get in and fireproof and or sheet rock or do the finish.

Mel Renfrow: 19:58

Yeah. So when you see those really tall ceilings

Dean Courser: 20:01

Mhmm.

Mel Renfrow: 20:01

That's how they get up there and yeah.

Dean Courser: 20:03

Absolutely. Atriums.

Mel Renfrow: 20:04

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 20:06

We do a a lot of cup lock, and we use it in all applications. I think Tim would say they use it a lot in industrial and commercial

Tim Long: 20:15

Yes.

Dean Courser: 20:16

As we do too, but we use a little bit more of the frame and brace on the exteriors on the West Coast. That's just, you know, there's

Mel Renfrow: 20:23

different regional. It is

Dean Courser: 20:25

somewhat. Yeah. But I think I think that, you know, there's a there's an interest and a push in our company to become more and more commercially based if we, you know, as we grow.

Mel Renfrow: 20:39

So you had so you talked about commercial, then the other side is industrial. So what are what's example of the industrial side of work?

Dean Courser: 20:46

Well, for us, you know, we do, at least 2 major pulp and paper mills, and we do the interior boilers, the came here digesters. So came here digester can is essentially a a cylindrical vessel that might be 240 feet tall.

Mel Renfrow: 21:05

Okay.

Dean Courser: 21:05

And it the the biggest one I know is down in Longview, and it's about 26 feet in diameter by about 240 feet tall, and we go in and scaffold that thing from the base all the way up. And, you know, with plank levels and you there's a lot of stuff in there to miss.

Mel Renfrow: 21:22

Do they do that to clean?

Dean Courser: 21:23

Yeah. Okay.

Mel Renfrow: 21:24

They

Dean Courser: 21:24

clean and inspect.

Mel Renfrow: 21:26

Okay.

Dean Courser: 21:26

Inspection is is almost as, of course, they're gonna clean it while they're in there, but they go and inspect. And then if it's broken because they're shut down

Tim Long: 21:35

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 21:35

They do the work.

Mel Renfrow: 21:36

Yeah.

Dean Courser: 21:37

So they've gotta be prepared if something's broken to fix it. I know Tim can jump on and tell you all kinds of stories about industrial work.

Tim Long: 21:45

Sure. In in our market, and the boilers, maintenance outages at power plants, where you have a large fossil coal burning boiler. Those are are huge, industrial projects. They're big in a way that they're executing a short amount of time with a lot of people, a lot of materials. It's a great revenue grab in about 30 days.

Tim Long: 22:09

You know, you could be a half a $1,000,000, but, you know, you may burn, you know, 10, 15,000 man hours in the process, but mostly within about 7 days, you're burning the majority of that. Those are big projects.

Mel Renfrow: 22:21

That's something, sorry to interrupt, but that's something so when you were acquired, I was the an admin trainer and I came down to help onboard you and ton of inventory. I came from an interior branch, so we never had inventory. But the other thing I can remember when I was first looking at payroll and, you know, you'd have all of these new hires and then like 2 weeks later or a week later, a ton of people would be laid off. And my first thought was like, man, do they not know how to, like, man load or forecast?

Tim Long: 22:50

They keep your people. Right?

Mel Renfrow: 22:51

They keep your people. Like, what's happening? And then I realized, like, you know, you guys were like, no, dumb dumb. This is this is typical. This is a power outage, and that's and usually, those they're in the middle of nowhere too.

Tim Long: 23:02

Most of them are. Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 23:04

Yeah. So it's like a totally different deal where, first of all, you're finding all the talent. You're getting them onboarded. It's just very paperwork heavy on top of the work that you're doing out there. So

Tim Long: 23:14

It is. Just to fill in the gaps in a lot of those instances, although that crew of 80 people may only work for PCI for, you know, 3 or 4 days, a lot of times, they're leaving us, going to work for another contractor in the turnaround or outage, and then joining back with PCI when we have all the work at the end for the last couple days. So, you know, it's so there is a challenge in getting a lot of supplemental labor, for a short period of time. It's just I just didn't want people to think it's pulling strangers off the street

Mel Renfrow: 23:48

Oh, no.

Tim Long: 23:49

Each time. You know? So they're these these people, for the most part, come out of the union, or their working force. In Houston, a lot of these guys are working on the boiler, and they flow right into the Houston branch outage needs. Not as big as a layoff.

Tim Long: 24:03

But yeah. And

Mel Renfrow: 24:04

they're repeat?

Tim Long: 24:05

It is repeat. Yeah. These it's seasonal work for some of these people. So outside of the boilers, a lot of what we do, we do a lot of corrosion under insulation, in the petrochemical facility, whether that's, you know, long pipe racks, you know, 1500 foot of pipe rack, 40 foot in the air, multiple levels where we're removing insulation and, they're inspecting the surface. We go back, blast coat, re insulate, and then tear down the scaffold at the end.

Tim Long: 24:34

We're doing a lot of that as, you know, in maintenance work, standalone maintenance work, and we're doing a lot of that in a turnaround scenario. We're under a time crunch, a short duration of manning up a lot of people. In some of those cases, we're manning up to a 100, 150 people, scaffold builders, at a time. We might run I'd have to check numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if we would have 200, maybe 200 plus at peak, as far as scaffold builders, on the industrial side. So there's there's just a lot of manpower required, I guess, on the industrial side.

Tim Long: 25:10

We also do towers, spheres. These towers are 8 foot, 10 foot diameter, close to 200 feet tall. Spheres, are just a large storage tank for product. Most of it's very dangerous, and are these petrochemical facilities or something else? And, we have to scaffold, around the spheres.

Tim Long: 25:30

They'll do inspections. We'll blast coat. And, again, scaffold is just a component of the total project.

Mel Renfrow: 25:36

Yeah.

Tim Long: 25:37

But that's we could go on and on, but there those are, I guess, the big industrial, projects that we do.

Mel Renfrow: 25:44

The big major ones.

Dean Courser: 25:45

So You you know what's interesting is, people wise, we actually it's it's a in the industrial, especially the refineries, we get travelers from Houston. So they're done with what they need to do down there, and they come up to Bellingham or, you know, we we have people, and they they there might be 4 or 10 in a group.

Mel Renfrow: 26:05

Oh, wow.

Dean Courser: 26:05

And, you know, they wanna come, hey. Do you have the hours? Do you have okay. You got 2 weeks at 60 hours a week, and they'll travel up. I don't I'm sure you get that in your region

Tim Long: 26:16

as well. We we get a lot of influx of travelers. Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 26:20

So what what all branches right now, perform scaffolds? So it started in Atlanta. That was kind of the first push and then to Houston. And then, Dean, when you were hired on, that's when the West Coast started up. So how many branches right now are in involved?

Mel Renfrow: 26:38

And I know there's others that are, thinking about it.

Dean Courser: 26:41

Absolutely. So I always go Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area, Fresno, and LA.

Tim Long: 26:54

Okay.

Dean Courser: 26:55

That's that's the it usually works, not always, but in in major cities where there there's a lot of a population. And and in Tim's case, you know, huge industrial plants all over the place. But, for us, it's more, you know, a a couple years ago, there were 70 tower cranes in the air in Seattle, probably more than that in the Bay Area, you know, when when they're rolling. So, you know, we still got a lot up, and so there's always something to do. It all starts with the stair towers, what what we would say.

Dean Courser: 27:28

You know, you get on-site with a stair tower or a sidewalk canopy.

Mel Renfrow: 27:32

What are

Dean Courser: 27:33

those? Okay. A stair tower, generally, when they excavate to do a, to do a high rise, they're gonna go down in the ground 60, 70, 80 feet. Yeah. And maybe that's gonna be a parking garage, or it might be, the bowels of the building, all the mechanical, some of it.

Tim Long: 27:52

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 27:52

But they'll go down. We we hang stair towers off the soldier piling. So the soldier piling are the steel uprights that they're gonna drive down. That's the piling. And then they've got this big let's just say it's a rectangle.

Dean Courser: 28:07

You know, it might be 200 by 300. So we'll go in and and cantilever off those that piling with welded brackets, the iron workers weld them on, and then we hang the stair towers that go down with the excavation. So when it gets to the bottom, we throw the jacks under it, spin it up, and now they've got a stair tower all the way down. Just just one of those on the job site with the GC, which is not gonna be the biggest part. But at the end of the day, we're there now

Tim Long: 28:36

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 28:36

And we're we're gonna do the rest of it. The other thing you asked about was the sidewalk canopy. We do a ton of them. They do miles of them in in Portland and the Bay Area as well. And, you know, what it is is it's pedestrian production while they're where they're while they're building the building.

Dean Courser: 28:56

Well, you know, guess what? That's one of the first things they need, and it's one of the last things they tear down.

Mel Renfrow: 29:01

Yeah.

Dean Courser: 29:01

And so if you get that, you know, they're all fully engineered. I don't wanna go too far down a rabbit hole. But But

Mel Renfrow: 29:07

I just wanted people to identify, like, hey, you've been to big city, New York, Chicago, Seattle, the big, you know, San Francisco when you're walking.

Dean Courser: 29:15

Absolutely.

Mel Renfrow: 29:15

Under those. So first in first out, that's that's a good that's a good business to be in. Yeah. And it's cool too. It's not, you know, you automatically think of scaffolding going up only.

Mel Renfrow: 29:26

But, yeah, that we go down below, street level too.

Dean Courser: 29:30

Absolutely. You know, and I I owe Tory Ayl, who works for us, this is his saying he and it's so true. It all starts with a stair tower. And so he'll go get a little stair tower, and then all of a sudden, we're doing a 700, $800,000 scaffold job.

Mel Renfrow: 29:46

So You knock it out of the park from there, and they'll just wanna Exactly. Keep you on. So

Dean Courser: 29:51

I I did rig scaffold for quite a while when right before I became operations manager about 3 years.

Mel Renfrow: 29:58

So what's rigging? Explain that. Actually, what they're building it?

Dean Courser: 30:01

Building it. Yeah. In the field. And I think that you probably would say our best our best estimators and people come from the field. I just wanna make sure you say that.

Mel Renfrow: 30:11

That they've put it they've done it.

Dean Courser: 30:13

They put it together.

Tim Long: 30:14

I'd say the vast majority of the people we we rely on as our scaffold experts in the company have come from the field or have some field experience. And I don't wanna insult people who do it every day because my limited field experience, I I was in it just long enough to respect everything they do

Dean Courser: 30:31

Absolutely.

Tim Long: 30:31

Every day. A couple years where some of these guys are building and erecting scaffold for 10, 15 years, compared to my experience, like I said, was probably just enough to truly appreciate it. Yeah. These guys bust their home.

Dean Courser: 30:44

When I got into scaffold, which was 1989, I started out, as I said, you know, low man on the totem pole poles, sleep sweeping floors, loading trucks. And then my next progression was I did some inside sales at the desk, you know, net rental walk ins. And net rental is where we're not doing any labor. They walk in, and they wanna rent a rolling tower so they can go around their house or maybe a fixed scaffold. After that, I I was in the field for a couple years about, like, Tim said, probably I was probably there about two and a half, three years long enough to get a real respect for it, but learn what how it went together.

Dean Courser: 31:23

And I just wanna stop right there and say that all the guys that are with us in Seattle, particularly, are guys that I've worked with her for for over 20 years. Some like Greg Larson and Daryl King. Mhmm. They were there with me in 1989. So we've all worked together for that long and been in this industry, and they're still with us today.

Dean Courser: 31:48

Yeah. So from there, I know I'm jumping around, you know, we I I went went to Kent, which was where we set up the next branch when we joined together. And then there was the progression of going through the different companies, but there's a lot in between. I mean, I can't tell you a lot of 30 some years.

Mel Renfrow: 32:08

It sounds like you've done everything. I mean, literally everything from sweeping the floor, the sales, all the way up.

Dean Courser: 32:14

Yes. Absolutely. And it I learned a great respect at every station.

Mel Renfrow: 32:19

Did you have a favorite? Are there ever days when you're like, this ops manager thing, that's pretty cool. But, man, I I'd go back and do x because I I really enjoyed it.

Dean Courser: 32:28

You know, honestly, I still really, really enjoy going to the job site, looking at a job, getting with the crew, getting them started, doing the measurement, translating that to paper and doing the bid, winning the bid, and then, you know, making the job happen. And, there's a lot of it. We all of our guys still go out, and I and I'm talking all of our guys in Portland, the Bay, LA, Seattle, those are the places I've had quite a bit to do with. They all go out every day and measure the jobs. It's not all on blueprints.

Dean Courser: 33:04

We take a lot of blueprints, but they show up in the morning, meet a guy at 6 AM on their drive in, look at a job or start the crew on the one that they looked at 3 days ago

Tim Long: 33:15

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 33:15

And tell I mean, if you don't go there and tell them, hey. You know, these these legs go here and this is our plan. What do you do? Just send them with a truckload of scaffold and say good luck? You know?

Dean Courser: 33:25

So there's a lot to it. These guys really work hard, but that is still my favorite thing is to go out and do that.

Mel Renfrow: 33:32

How about you, Tim?

Tim Long: 33:33

If I could go back and do anything, I'd move back to the Bahamas and drive a forklift.

Mel Renfrow: 33:38

You did that somewhere in the

Tim Long: 33:39

I did. It was when we were still, Scaffold Concepts. It was 1998. It was great. It's fantastic.

Tim Long: 33:45

Our responsibilities were low. The sun was hot. It was good times. No. Not a lot

Dean Courser: 33:51

of worries.

Tim Long: 33:51

You know, like Dean said, I I enjoy the hell out of just getting out there with the guys. Yeah. I don't want everyone to be too far away from that. Absolutely. Just because we've all put our hands on it and, you know, you're, you know, with the experience that most of our people have were, and I mean, the estimators that we have today with all the field experience, all of us are just very much connected to the work.

Tim Long: 34:13

And I thought of an urban myth.

Mel Renfrow: 34:15

Yeah. Did you know it was it was gonna come later.

Tim Long: 34:17

It it just sprung into my head. When when you mentioned Dean mentioned going out to the job site and not really having a specification, you gotta figure it out. This is something unique to Scaffold. Yes. We don't have a specification.

Mel Renfrow: 34:30

So you don't you don't have, like

Tim Long: 34:31

We have a we have I I wanna say we have a loose set of rules. We we have a very strict set of safety rules to

Mel Renfrow: 34:37

follow, right,

Tim Long: 34:38

and guidelines and OSHA standards and some engineering data to go off of. But, you know, as I've been involved in a lot of installation and coatings jobs, you know, just use those as examples. You're provided a spec a lot of times quantities. Now there there's separate challenges to bidding both.

Mel Renfrow: 34:55

And that's where they detail out everything and on the on the plans they're they're showing they're not showing you how to build the scaffold on the plan.

Tim Long: 35:01

Correct. So when you invite, 4 competitive scaffold bill bidders from different companies to a job site, and the contractor, for lack of, you know, and first constraint you know, to work within our time constraints here, a contract says I need to get there. You have 4 different ideas.

Mel Renfrow: 35:17

Sure.

Tim Long: 35:18

And that's the real fun part of it. Right? Because we're not tied down to a spec. We're really left up to our own design innovations and how much time do I have to spend on this, what's our workload like, The amount of creativity and autonomy. You know, creativity you're allowed to put into the project, and the autonomy you kinda have to do that is what makes scaffolding fun to me.

Tim Long: 35:40

If I were going to try and lure a young bright engineer, into the scaffold business. That's one of the first things I would tell them is the you know, hey. Might be a little intimidating that you may not have any field experience, but to learn the product line, to learn how this goes together. My stepbrother, Mike Junior, like, say it's like playing with an erector set or LEGOs. I didn't really wanna simplify it like that.

Tim Long: 36:02

But once you you understand the basic concepts and you understand the rules and you have a good mentor, it's a ton of fun because it allows you to be innovative and creative and to go out there and beat your competition. And it's that part of it

Mel Renfrow: 36:15

is so much fun. It's

Tim Long: 36:16

like being an engineer. It is. And, and then, you know, the things that make your bid process challenging at that point, again, is, like, how much time do I have put into it? What are the resources we have available? But if you had all the time in the world, you could just have so much fun

Dean Courser: 36:29

Yeah.

Tim Long: 36:29

With trying to solve the problem. Because, really, what we're providing are access solutions. Right? So Nice. And we're providing, a safety service.

Tim Long: 36:38

Right? We're trying to raise the floor literally. Whoop whoop. And provide our provide our contractors, a safe work environment to work in. So you're in the safety business.

Tim Long: 36:49

You're you're you're in the innovation business. I mean, I just I can't think of anything more fun to be involved with.

Dean Courser: 36:54

Absolutely. And and it it is, we have, as you said, autonomy. But think about this. We we design it, and we got a good design. We bid it that way.

Dean Courser: 37:06

Then you get the crew guy out there, you know, field personnel, and they're great. We've got some of the best in the business. I I honestly know that. But do they wanna change it sometimes from what you you All the time. What you did in life.

Tim Long: 37:19

They've got a better idea.

Dean Courser: 37:20

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Well,

Mel Renfrow: 37:22

they know the tricks of the trade and they saw this and they did this the one time. Yeah. I have a question I wanna go in about, you know, you talk about estimating. So that's an additional, challenge, I guess, or a consideration. So obviously, do we have enough manpower to do this job, but then also do we have enough scaffolding?

Mel Renfrow: 37:41

So can you can you talk about talk about that? You mentioned at the very beginning, Dean, how your very first job here, you got 2 trucks from Atlanta. Mhmm. Do we do that a lot? Where how do we

Dean Courser: 37:54

share the

Mel Renfrow: 37:56

so can you talk about that a little bit?

Dean Courser: 37:58

We have a a we started this, and it might have been 8 or 10 years ago. I don't remember the exact date, but there's what they call a scaffold transfers line. And anybody that's in scaffold and usually, it's numerous people at a branch. I'm on it. I look at everyone.

Dean Courser: 38:14

I think you're still seeing them, right, and looking at them. But the and especially our people that are in the yard and the people that do our you know, know what's coming up at our branch. I kinda have my hands on a lot of it, but we transfer equipment. In the old days, freight freight was not paid for by our company, and we talked about that. And, you know, it was decided, hey.

Dean Courser: 38:40

How are we ever gonna get people to move stuff in between branches unless there's an incentive?

Mel Renfrow: 38:46

So you mean, like, PCI didn't pay for the freight. It was up to the branch.

Dean Courser: 38:50

Yeah. If Tim needed something and he wanted to move a truck from Seattle, they had to pick that freight up.

Mel Renfrow: 38:58

And you'd put it on the job as a job cost?

Tim Long: 39:00

Right. And to keep things in perspective, freight from Seattle Houston could be $5,000, and the monthly allocation of that product on that load is probably about $900. Yeah. Exactly. It was a poor incentivization for growth at the time.

Tim Long: 39:15

Right?

Dean Courser: 39:16

So I don't want to make it sound like there's something for nothing, but we all pay a percentage each month for the scaffold indefinitely.

Mel Renfrow: 39:24

Right.

Dean Courser: 39:25

And and it is it gets paid for. Fact is we're getting close even though we've buy been buying a lot. We, in this room, all of us own a lot of scaffold. Sean can tell you more about that.

Mel Renfrow: 39:35

Sean Reichenbach?

Dean Courser: 39:36

Sean Sean O'Donnell.

Mel Renfrow: 39:38

Sean O'Donnell.

Dean Courser: 39:38

And he's the

Mel Renfrow: 39:39

The money guy.

Dean Courser: 39:40

But that said, we we move this asset, and we move it well. Right now, the problem is we don't have quite enough.

Tim Long: 39:49

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 39:49

Our company has been tremendous. You know, we do our due diligence. We do this in Seattle, Travis Stanaway and I. And we create CapEx's if Tim needs some stuff that they they don't have or don't don't re rent. We re rent a lot too.

Dean Courser: 40:05

Mhmm. But to tell to answer the question, I feel like we're very fortunate. We move our asset well. We have a lot of scaffold of approaching $50,000,000 worth, and, you know, we share it. Yeah.

Dean Courser: 40:20

And so the incentive is, if you need it, we'll send it. Before, there was no incentive. It was like, hey. I got a job 3 weeks from next Thursday. We're gonna hang on to that.

Dean Courser: 40:30

Yeah. Now now we send it that people know we're gonna get more. I I think that that's been one of our our best things we have going for us. I don't know if I answered that adequately.

Tim Long: 40:42

I I think you summed it up really well.

Mel Renfrow: 40:45

Well, it sounds like that's something it's it's an example of how since we got in 2007 when we started and where we've gone gone to now. So what are, what are some of the most I know we've won some, awards. Mhmm. So let's talk a little bit some of the accomplishments and awards that we've, the teams have received and then some of your favorite projects that you've been on.

Tim Long: 41:09

We talked about this earlier. Dean's, probably the lead right now with the SAIA, which is the Scaffold, Industry Association. We've won, I think, 4 awards Mhmm. Between the branches. I think one out of Atlanta and three out of branches you're probably more familiar with.

Tim Long: 41:28

Yeah. So speak to those projects.

Dean Courser: 41:30

It's called the Scaffold Access Industry Association is what it is now because it includes ManLifts as well. Okay. But we we're a member, and, it's, it's a great association. Just briefly, you know, we have a lot to do with the ANSI and OSHA codes. In other words, the way the staff rules are gonna get written and become law, We we do a lot of that in the SAIA.

Dean Courser: 41:58

We're a we're a member. So we have one sitting in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, which is Nashville for a job that Mike senior and that team did at, Rancun Mountain.

Tim Long: 42:10

Yeah. In Chattanooga.

Dean Courser: 42:12

Chattanooga. That was scaffold job of the year nationwide.

Mel Renfrow: 42:15

Oh, wow.

Dean Courser: 42:16

And then we we have 3 in Seattle. We have one for shoring job of the year for Expedia that Darryl King managed and did. We have one for T Mobile, which was suspended job of the year. So another swing stages Mhmm. Nationwide.

Dean Courser: 42:36

Another one for T Mobile on the next phase for shoring job of the year. So we got 3 of those and basically 3 in a row. And, we're very proud of that.

Mel Renfrow: 42:47

Yeah. You should be.

Dean Courser: 42:48

And we're it's time to submit again. I'm hoping all the guys submit some. We have cool jobs everywhere.

Mel Renfrow: 42:53

So do they submit through that association?

Dean Courser: 42:55

Absolutely.

Mel Renfrow: 42:56

Any questions, call Dean?

Dean Courser: 42:57

Yeah. There we go. Call. I can I can send them the form? And by the way, guys, we need lots of pictures.

Mel Renfrow: 43:03

Yeah. Hey, that's great for our resume and all of that. It just brings in more and more work for us.

Dean Courser: 43:09

Absolutely.

Mel Renfrow: 43:10

What, let's go into what are some opportunities for joint, joint ventures? Because I think, you know, you mentioned the areas that have scaffolding right now. Obviously, there's another whole list of opportunities out there. So what are the opportunities for joint ventures?

Dean Courser: 43:29

Well, I'll start, and then I know Tim has some stuff to say too. But, you know, in our markets, this this is a very similar thing for both of us in Houston and Seattle and the Bay Area. We already all roll up under a big branch. So, yes, there's scaffold, but as you know in Seattle, we're we're under the main umbrella. There's ISS.

Dean Courser: 43:53

There's the refineries up in Bellingham, all part of ISS. And I know that we don't have divisions anymore. I'm just saying trade wise. There's insulation, abatement, paint, a few other things, and then scaffold. Well, we've always worked together.

Dean Courser: 44:09

I mean

Mel Renfrow: 44:10

And bundled services

Dean Courser: 44:11

like yeah. Bundled within that group.

Tim Long: 44:13

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 44:14

So and I I don't think that's gonna stop, especially where scaffold is rolled up as part of the total, like they are in Houston, the Bay Area, Seattle, and some of our other markets, Portland. Mhmm. And, so that's not gonna stop. I've I feel like we've got the sky's the limit with opening up into doing it with our PCI brother in in interiors. Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 44:42

And we're we're getting started on that. It's a little bit of a, you know, we're just getting going. But we we've been working for him for years

Tim Long: 44:49

Yeah.

Dean Courser: 44:50

And and we we we love it. I mean, let's put the money back in our own pocket.

Mel Renfrow: 44:55

Exactly.

Dean Courser: 44:55

And, so joint venture wise, the only one outside, help people all the time. I know Tim does too. We help help them with questions and estimating and things like that, but we actually have one going right now that we just did with Dallas for the New Mexico, UMLH job. It's the University of New Mexico. I don't think I said the acronym right there.

Dean Courser: 45:21

But, anyway, there's 32 swing stages hanging on it. We we helped estimate it a little bit. Tory did some really great drawings. I helped with the estimation on the suspended stage, and then we sent our best suspended stage guy down there to lead the crews, and he just came back today.

Mel Renfrow: 45:41

Okay.

Dean Courser: 45:42

So we we signed an agreement and, you know, we shared revenue and some margin and, you know, of course, we all take the risk, but I think that's gonna be huge for us.

Mel Renfrow: 45:51

Absolutely.

Dean Courser: 45:52

And that that was with, you know, the Dallas team, but there's no reason we can't do that in Las Vegas and anywhere that we have our brand.

Mel Renfrow: 46:01

There's plenty of work out there. I mean

Dean Courser: 46:03

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 46:03

To to have. I know, one of the we mentioned that you're here this week for the product line summit.

Dean Courser: 46:10

Mhmm.

Mel Renfrow: 46:11

And one of, you know, aspects of that is also for people kind of like, hey, you're thinking of getting into scaffolding.

Dean Courser: 46:18

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 46:19

And and how do you incorporate that into, you know, your current business? So

Tim Long: 46:23

Just to comment on a couple of things Dean said, as far as opportunities to JV, one of the areas of focus is the mission critical business units where we're the data centers, the, you know, Intel's, the where we're the semiconductor plants. I mean, those are just ginormous opportunities. Mega scaffold projects, we'll call them. We just secured a $12,000,000 scaffold project that's estimated to, occur in a within 9 months, which is a ton of scaffold. Wow.

Tim Long: 46:53

It's a lot of lot of revenue. And it's just a small piece of the Intel Chandler

Dean Courser: 46:58

side. Absolutely.

Tim Long: 46:59

So, you know, those opportunities to JV on these mission critical projects where our interior groups, are performing clean room, ceilings and walls, or we might be performing, you know, commercial insulation services. All of these product lines need scaffold to get through. I I think those are the big obvious ones, that are that are out there immediate because they're they're happening. These data centers are popping up left and right, and Intel is just a monster.

Mel Renfrow: 47:32

Well, it's an it's what happened to you. That's why you're in Houston. It was NRG, which is a huge customer. And then once we kind of, you know, proved ourselves as the scaffold solution

Tim Long: 47:42

Sure.

Mel Renfrow: 47:42

You're packing your bag and moving Yeah. Pretty quick. You're moving to Houston. What this might be obvious to some, but not everyone. So I wanna ask it.

Mel Renfrow: 47:51

So what are the benefits or the advantages to partner internally with you instead of going to a, you know, a third party scaffold company?

Tim Long: 48:01

Well, to to Dean's point, growing the green, keeping the money in house, is the obvious one. There was something we discussed downstairs that I I've noticed personally going you know, going on to a commercial scaffold job where McCarthy was the GC and where PCI has a pretty long history with McCarthy. I believe, well, we might be their biggest spend. Right? So there's something to be said about growing the brand recognition on these commercial jobs.

Tim Long: 48:31

I think we're positioned to do something or be in a position that I I I'm not aware of any other competitors out there who can consolidate or execute commercial insulation, ceilings and walls, or a drywall, fire stop, fireproofing, scaffolding, and hydro excavation. I I know I'm not covering all of our possible opportunities, but I went into this job walk, at McCarthy when they were just moving dirt, just because I knew that it was a huge hospital. They had 2 large atriums, and there was an opportunity to go in there and perform scaffold services in these atriums. And I left that meeting because there were West Coast McCarthy people been transported ported to Texas. They were so happy to see us.

Mel Renfrow: 49:17

Yeah. Like, oh, you're here too.

Tim Long: 49:18

And they're like, we know what we get with PCI. And that's very appreciative of the other business units that create those opportunities for us. But I think there's an opportunity there to even further that and grow the brand because when I told them that, hey. I don't I'm not the expert, but we perform hydro excavation services. We got a hydro excavation job out of it.

Tim Long: 49:38

It wasn't wasn't big, but there we were day 1 before they were pouring concrete, PCI hard hats on the job performing hydro excavation work before scaffolding. We have a scaffold opportunity out of it. We're bidding the insulation with the mechanical contractor. We don't have an interiors division there, but in locations where you do have all these services, there's just such a great opportunity to develop a relationship like PCI has with McCarthy, where you grow the brand, you instill confidence, and they're happy to see and encourage, the PCI brand in all aspects of the project. Yeah.

Tim Long: 50:13

So I think that's another incentive to

Dean Courser: 50:15

And I I would just wanna say that I think that's a real testament to the guys in California that have done laid so much work with McCarthy, interior scaffold. I mean, all the guys in the Bay Area. I mean, I don't know about dropping names, but we have a tremendous team down there. And they they McCarthy, we're one of their biggest spends. Right?

Dean Courser: 50:37

Mhmm.

Tim Long: 50:38

They told us we're their biggest spend.

Dean Courser: 50:40

Yeah. And so we've we've been doing stuff, and now they're down there, and it's a total fit. Right?

Tim Long: 50:46

Yeah. And I've performed plenty of scaffold work at, you know, on McCarthy job sites. It's just that we've we've grown such over the years. And now the perception is, man, you guys do everything. Right.

Tim Long: 50:59

Exactly. Think of another contractor that even comes close to bundling commercial services or being able to offer so much. No. I think it's something we can exploit.

Mel Renfrow: 51:08

Well, and we've we've talked about it before in different, ways. It's not only obviously our reputation and our safety record and all of that and and the convenience of writing one contract instead of 15 or whatever, but it's also just something to keep in mind, your relationship with someone, even at the project engineer level, those people are gonna grow with you over your career. We, Christian Adelolo out of Albany was talking about that a personal relationship he had in Albany actually helped land a project down in Austin. Absolutely. And so that's part of it too is, you know, beyond just our reputation, the quality of the workers, those relationships that we have.

Mel Renfrow: 51:49

And

Dean Courser: 51:50

I couldn't agree with you more. So I would just say that we work with a lot of major GCs and mechanicals, and they they're all over the place. I mean, we we haven't even touched the the tip of the iceberg about what what we could get into. I I this may be a little off topic, but I I sincerely feel and have felt for years that Scaffold is our biggest growth opportunity, both within the company and out. Yeah.

Dean Courser: 52:19

I mean, we could we're not doing scaffold in Kansas City. We're not doing scaffold in Chicago. We're not Austin. Austin. We're we're doing some in LA, but we could do more and and every bit, you know, we're working on that.

Dean Courser: 52:32

But

Mel Renfrow: 52:33

That was the opposite of off topic. It was actually the perfect segue because the next place I was gonna go is, what what does the future hold for us? So you mentioned that there's different branches that up on the, East Coast as well. Absolutely. Is there any other, are there any new innovations or technology that you see potential for?

Mel Renfrow: 52:56

Or where where is it going?

Tim Long: 52:57

In our area, we're seeing a lot, and this isn't this just doesn't have you know, include scaffold. Right? Mhmm. Geofencing is, and cost controls.

Mel Renfrow: 53:07

What is geofencing?

Tim Long: 53:09

Geofencing is monitoring the time on tools or it's it's a way of monitoring your personnel in a work area.

Mel Renfrow: 53:15

Okay.

Tim Long: 53:16

So you can set up a geofence on a building and and limit the perimeter to within, let's say, 6 or 7 feet of that building. And then the assumption is if you have people within 6 or 7 feet of that building, they're building scaffold up the side of it. Right? Yeah. So it's a way of tracking, time on tools.

Tim Long: 53:33

That's that's coming along pretty well a lot, mainly on the industrial side.

Mel Renfrow: 53:38

So you can use that for estimating, not not to, like, FBI CIA track people.

Tim Long: 53:43

Some some of it is a FBI CIA track. I mean, well, it's on the part of the owner or the customer, to better understand how much productivity you're getting in a turnaround. You know, work in an acid unit is completely different than work in a, you know, work in a a different petrochemical unit. Just it's it's slower. There's more safety precautions, and I think that's, you know, one of the reasons why they want to see how much productivity are they getting on these projects.

Tim Long: 54:08

So we're starting to see that, and and that's something they're looking for the contractors to carry.

Dean Courser: 54:13

K.

Tim Long: 54:13

The other is just more involved or more, innovations towards project controls and tracking, setting, norms, productivities, now getting very specific into what's the value of a 7 by 7 by 25 25 foot tall scaffold versus what's the what are the total man hours to hang a 30 by 40 suspended scaffold 80 foot in the air? What are the mechanisms that go into each? It is and how do we track them on a job site?

Mel Renfrow: 54:45

And so that would all go into the autonomy piece when you're actually trying to build it.

Tim Long: 54:48

It yeah. Some of that is. But, yeah, they're they're trying to figure out how do we, hold our contractors accountable. You know. And again, it's something they want us to carry and and track.

Tim Long: 54:58

So

Dean Courser: 54:58

The one thing that I've seen lately and we we have quite a repertoire of stuff that we can do, and I think that we've got a ways to go on this. But we've got a company now that wants to provide the nets.

Mel Renfrow: 55:10

So Net. I thought you said nat, like g n a.

Dean Courser: 55:13

Sorry. Nets. I need to talk into the mic here.

Tim Long: 55:15

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 55:16

So the nets off the side. Okay.

Tim Long: 55:17

Yeah. Leading at leading edge fall protection

Dean Courser: 55:19

is what they call it. And and debris. Yeah. I mean, debris and fall. Right?

Dean Courser: 55:24

I mean, so if somebody did fall, would catch them. But, also, anything that can fly off the building Mhmm. You know, that isn't got by isn't taken care of by the perimeter guardrail system and usually a net, and they also do that. They've got their own with panels that fit in. So we've been looking at that a little bit.

Tim Long: 55:43

So this product, would be used before you have walls up on the building. When you you drive by a high rise, you see it's they're it's just open slabs. Sometimes you'll see some netting around it.

Dean Courser: 55:56

We're being asked for it.

Tim Long: 55:57

We're yeah. We're so there's a product out there. Where we're at, we're just finding that, the GCs are taking it and buying it. And so, you know, I I don't know where our place is in the market, but it's a it's a neat product because they've modularized modular modulized it. The I can't speak right now.

Tim Long: 56:14

Anyway, they've modularized it. So you can you can install it. It ships nice and neat and racks, goes up pretty fast.

Dean Courser: 56:20

Stores as well. Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 56:22

So that's something we would own, and you can just reinstall.

Tim Long: 56:25

It'd be another product line.

Dean Courser: 56:26

Yeah. And and stores as well is a big thing because we all run out of yard space. But, yes, I mean, that's just that's just one. I I mean, we could ask for stuff all the time, and as long as we can safely do it and it makes sense for our company, I I say we keep doing it. And and people kinda see that as part of Scaffold, that particularly that particular

Tim Long: 56:48

It does. It fits in well with what we do. Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 56:51

How have you seen it change since you know, obviously, we were just getting started, Tim, when you came on board and then, you know, just going to the West Coast. So how have you seen it evolve over time? Because I think at first, people were like scaffolding and and were skeptical. Like, can we make money on it? It's, you know, have you seen that evolve over time?

Dean Courser: 57:13

Absolutely. I I'll I'll just say real quickly. I learned fairly quickly on took me about 6 months and a lot of hard head beating, you know. But we, as a company, account for ourselves in a tremendous way. And coming from other companies, we were used to that.

Dean Courser: 57:35

I was not. I I gotta tell you.

Mel Renfrow: 57:38

Then what talk about that a little bit more. What do you mean?

Dean Courser: 57:40

Well, we know what's going on on our on our jobs. It's not a secret. I mean At

Mel Renfrow: 57:44

all times. Yeah.

Dean Courser: 57:45

We we we have a a CIP. Obviously, we, you know, we can get into schedule 6. We can

Tim Long: 57:51

go

Dean Courser: 57:51

into the p and l. But even even if you're not a manager, you know at all times what's going on in your job. Other places I came from, that's a big secret. Yes.

Mel Renfrow: 58:01

I mean, complete transparency.

Dean Courser: 58:03

Exactly. And and knowing what we do, this is extremely important to me, and to leave behind this. We operate off cost. So it's pretty simple once you figure out that everything we do is driven off cost. That's how margin is accrued.

Tim Long: 58:19

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 58:19

At another company, I was told, hey. You charge this much an hour, and we're gonna get this much for rent. Throw your bids out. And the only way I ever knew if I made money is, hey. I I we beat the man hours.

Dean Courser: 58:32

Here, we know everything. You can drill down and see what a screw cost. That that was a huge change for me. I'm just saying. And, other other weird things is I can remember one of the first scaffold jobs I was on when I talked about I worked in the field.

Dean Courser: 58:46

Yeah. We used to have 12 inch hairy plank in cases. So they call them hairy because they're solids on, and they still had all the they they were not smooth.

Mel Renfrow: 58:57

Okay. But

Dean Courser: 58:57

they're 12 inch, 2 inch thick, and 12 foot long. Those get wet or getting plastered on them. I mean, you've probably yeah. They're very heavy. So we we now have mostly steel or aluminum plank.

Dean Courser: 59:11

They're still heavy.

Mel Renfrow: 59:13

Sure.

Dean Courser: 59:13

They you're not getting as many slivers, and, they don't absorb quite as much water. We have wood plank, in most cases, a much lighter variety. You know? A solid sawn or a laminated board. Those are just, you know, weird kind of off the cuff changes that I've seen over the years, and it may seem small, but ergonomically, those things would kill your guys.

Tim Long: 59:35

Oh, sure.

Dean Courser: 59:36

I'm sure you got it more.

Tim Long: 59:37

Yeah. I'd say, since I came on board in 2007, the willingness to grow not that there wasn't ever a willingness to grow, but just the action of growing the scaffold product line, geographically, incorporating it into some other branches seem to have just taken off, at one point in time. I think that was I mean, that's the biggest thing. The some of the the some of the things have come out with the flywheel Yeah. Which have, helped to incentivize growth of such a high asset product line where, you know, you have to own a lot to do a lot.

Dean Courser: 01:00:09

Sure. Have a lot.

Tim Long: 01:00:10

The the flywheel has been great, and I I think that's really gonna help growth going forward to help incentivize it. Yeah. I think that's a big change, and that's thinking outside the box, and that took a lot of years. And I don't wanna name drop, but thank you to the people who are involved in that, because it really has helped the branches. And and overall, it's gonna help the company.

Tim Long: 01:00:29

You know, generally, safety, has changed if I'm speaking not just within PCI, but in the industry. When I started building scaffold, you know, I was exposed to it in high school, and some people aren't wearing harnesses and lanyards, including myself. Right?

Dean Courser: 01:00:45

No. But he did.

Mel Renfrow: 01:00:46

And Even super high up?

Tim Long: 01:00:48

Even super high up. It just it it wasn't happening. We didn't have a secondary safety device like a net system. I mean, those things were happening. And what I'm not saying that when I came in, it was the old school part of that.

Tim Long: 01:01:00

It was actually I came in during the transitional part of that

Dean Courser: 01:01:02

Mhmm.

Tim Long: 01:01:03

When they were pushing the harnesses and lanyards. So I think one of the first jobs I got on, I walked to the top of the boiler, and there was a pile of harnesses and lanyards and 10 guys building scaffold. And I thought, I guess I can I don't need this? Right? Yeah.

Tim Long: 01:01:16

But, you know, just so safety, we've come a long way. I mean, that's 5 years later that was unheard of or 4 years. I mean, early 2000. I mean, I'm I'm talking about this was right at the cutting edge of the of of that transition where, you start to see it market wide. You know, we you know, the innovations in safety, the processes in the commercial market, really the industrial side, on the petrochemical side, I've probably seen more of it.

Tim Long: 01:01:42

Yeah. It's it's pretty strict, pretty stringent, you know, just pretax planning. You know, the most places have gone from instead of doing an initial pretax plan, it's doing one as your day develops and as as conditions change.

Dean Courser: 01:01:57

Sure.

Mel Renfrow: 01:01:57

You do it more than once. Yeah.

Tim Long: 01:01:59

And it's one of those things where everyone hates it at first. You're like, oh, man. I gotta do some more paperwork. How you know? But it's one of those things that's I just I think it's so important to what we do, especially in scaffolding because as we build the scaffold, we literally are encountering new conditions.

Tim Long: 01:02:14

Our leading edge changes were changes in elevation. It's good to account for that. The PCI helmets, hard hats, I think that's, you know, that's a growing trend. I wasn't I wasn't sad to see that come on board. I think it's probably been met with, you know, mixed motion from the field, but I think overall, that's been great.

Tim Long: 01:02:35

And I think, especially for scaffolding when, it's very likely that hard hats, fall off of our heads at elevation being exposed to wind. I think that's a I'm glad we're doing that. Yeah. But, yeah, safety's come a long way, and I'm sorry I can't come up with better examples. No.

Mel Renfrow: 01:02:50

I think those are all great.

Tim Long: 01:02:51

It it's just constantly, evolving.

Dean Courser: 01:02:54

Well, I'm glad you said all that. You know, I'm I'm sitting here thinking about mechanical things, but how about Iauditor and, some of the things that we're able to do with auditing our job sites and our foremen are doing it.

Mel Renfrow: 01:03:06

The software and the

Dean Courser: 01:03:07

technology. Yeah. X Tracker. You know. We we have so much that we did not ever have.

Dean Courser: 01:03:15

And, I don't know. I guess, I I don't really care to say it, but we didn't even do pretax plans at the other companies that I was at. I mean, we we had a good idea what we're gonna do that day. We would've got the crew started, but there was no.

Mel Renfrow: 01:03:28

We didn't Written documentation of it?

Dean Courser: 01:03:31

Right, wrong, or indifferent. So those are all really good things I I think that you brought up. And there's there's many more. And sometimes, you know, I say it's hard to keep up with with all the stuff that we roll out. But, man, it's pretty good stuff once you get your head into it.

Mel Renfrow: 01:03:47

Exactly. Once you once you figure it all out, it's worth it.

Dean Courser: 01:03:51

Yeah.

Mel Renfrow: 01:03:51

What do you what do you think about the flywheel, Dean?

Dean Courser: 01:03:54

Well, I'll tell you. You know, we did that in Portland.

Mel Renfrow: 01:03:57

Really quick. Can I pause right there? I wanna I wanna clarify what we mean, but so the flywheel fund is something relatively new. So it came out before if a branch wanted to get into scaffolding, they had to take all of the costs on themselves, which would then impact the branch's ability to bonus, etcetera, etcetera, because it impacted their results. So what the flywheel fund did essentially is there's a slash fund that you have to apply for and instead of it impacting just your branch, it comes from a fund at the corporate level.

Mel Renfrow: 01:04:32

So it gives you, an opportunity to establish the baseline without taking the hit onto the branch directly. Did I explain that right?

Dean Courser: 01:04:40

Yes. Yes. Okay. Very well.

Mel Renfrow: 01:04:42

So that's the Flywheel Fund.

Dean Courser: 01:04:43

And we have a few of them going, but a real success story is the Portland Scaffold branch. And, you know, there's lots of people to thank there, but we got a flywheel fund. And it allowed us to get some of the best people on board right away and help pay for some of the expenses for the 1st couple of years here where it's been getting going, and it's a real success story. I mean, we've got a really great estimator. We've got another great estimator coming up, got a great superintendent.

Dean Courser: 01:05:15

We've got all the bones, you know. And, Joe and Sean are great to work with and and for. And, you know, it's a success story. I think my point is we could do that other places.

Tim Long: 01:05:27

Mhmm.

Dean Courser: 01:05:27

So it does not impact their bonus and helps ease the pain of of getting into something that is tough to get going in.

Mel Renfrow: 01:05:35

Yeah. And I think I really like what you're talking about for the estimators because I think initially some of the fear with 1 PCG was people were afraid like, oh, am I still gonna have a job? What if we stop performing this specific product line? It's the exact opposite. It opens up all these other things that you might not have been exposed to before.

Mel Renfrow: 01:05:59

So you sold it well. People that are creative and

Dean Courser: 01:06:01

Yes.

Mel Renfrow: 01:06:02

You know, like like change. Right?

Tim Long: 01:06:05

Well, it did that for me in Houston. I when I decided to go to Houston, one of the motivating factors was being exposed to other things other than scaffolding. And I was really thinking of my career future and really my my lack of patience. So I wanted to keep learning, honestly. And, so one PCG should actually promote that.

Tim Long: 01:06:26

And like I said, in Houston, we'd we're fortunate enough to have a lot of service lines under one roof. So it was kinda easy to butt into someone as someone's service line, especially if you had a connection with a customer. It could help them gain leverage or help secure an opportunity. I kinda tried to work out a niche like that there. And you have

Mel Renfrow: 01:06:46

Sounds like it's working for you.

Tim Long: 01:06:47

Yeah. It's so far so good. Yeah. It's been a great opportunity.

Mel Renfrow: 01:06:50

So what is when people listen to this, and what is the one takeaway that you want them to have about, scaffold?

Tim Long: 01:06:58

It's fun. It's I think, I think it's a ton of fun. It makes money in your sleep. Yeah. When when you're ready scaffold.

Tim Long: 01:07:06

Hey. This is a very profitable business. I don't see a ceiling. I think the sky's the limit literally, as far as our growth potential. I think it's an exciting product line.

Tim Long: 01:07:17

Some of the things I said before, you know, what I might say to a young engineer or to recruit an estimator of having some of the freedom and creativity that you're allowed to have within scaffolding, is a lot of fun. And it's it's to be one one other thing I like about it is it's pretty it moves pretty quickly, especially when you're on the commercial side. You know, an opportunity can turn into revenue in a week. Right? So on the con you know, the other side of that is you're not carrying a lot backlog in those situations.

Tim Long: 01:07:48

Yeah. But, but, you know, that's a lot of fun. It's fast paced. You build, a pretty solid team. You can't survive without communication, so you're you're forced into that.

Dean Courser: 01:07:59

Absolutely. And one one

Tim Long: 01:08:00

takeaway, I I guess, would be that Scaffold is a just a great opportunity for growth, and it's a fun business to be in.

Mel Renfrow: 01:08:06

Nicely said. I like that. You make money when you sleep. Yeah.

Tim Long: 01:08:09

Make money. What's better than that?

Mel Renfrow: 01:08:10

Yeah. It's great.

Dean Courser: 01:08:12

Well, in the explanation of that, you very well said, is, you know, we're at the end of the day, you gotta think of this. We're just a service. We don't leave anything behind on the job site. We're not leaving insulation. We're not leaving drywall or paint.

Dean Courser: 01:08:28

We're a rental company. Mhmm. We're making money when when 7 days a week when it's up. And when they call and go, hey. We wanna keep it longer.

Dean Courser: 01:08:37

That's great for us. But I agree with Tim. It's it's a fun business. It's very demanding. I think it's probably one of the more challenging businesses we have if you really get into the nuts and bolts.

Dean Courser: 01:08:51

And, it's a great career. I'd really like to see I'd like to see more of our younger folks doing it. And when I say that, I mean, we have some real rock stars coming up, and, you know, hey, Scaffold's good business to get into. It's a good career.

Tim Long: 01:09:08

I think it's a great opportunity for exposure

Dean Courser: 01:09:11

Yes.

Tim Long: 01:09:12

To, bring an intern or a young engineer into a branch that maybe does multiple things, put them in scaffolding, you're gonna expose them to all the other trades eventually. Yes. That's another way to look at it.

Mel Renfrow: 01:09:24

It's just because it touches everything.

Tim Long: 01:09:26

It pretty much does.

Mel Renfrow: 01:09:27

Very nice. Well, it was great having you both both here. I mean, just ask one fun question at the end. I'll ask what Dean, what was your very first concert that you ever went to?

Dean Courser: 01:09:39

Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I believe it was 1976. Where? At the at the Portland Memorial Coliseum, which doesn't even stand anymore. It's now the Rose Garden, which they built on that site.

Mel Renfrow: 01:09:54

On top of it? Yep. Very cool. Who'd you go with?

Dean Courser: 01:09:57

I went with my girlfriend. Her name was Carrie Hall. I was I thought that I was in love and gonna be with her the rest of my life.

Mel Renfrow: 01:10:07

Didn't work out,

Dean Courser: 01:10:07

No. How

Mel Renfrow: 01:10:08

about you, Tim? What was your very, very first concert?

Tim Long: 01:10:11

This is revealing. Mine was Motley Crue Girls Girls Girls Tour. I was in 7th grade. My parents had no idea what they had dropped me off to. And I went with my brothers, and we've been raising hell ever since probably.

Tim Long: 01:10:25

So Nice. I think we came out smelling like a bingo hall. That's what my mom said. Smell like cigarettes

Mel Renfrow: 01:10:30

and Bingo hall. Yeah.

Tim Long: 01:10:33

But, yeah, it was it was great. My older brother and sister were there, and the idea was they were gonna chaperone us, and they dropped us off and pretty much said, later, y'all are on your own dorks. And they took off, and we watched Tommy Lee do flips up on a drum kit and thought it was the coolest thing ever. You know? 7th grade was my

Dean Courser: 01:10:51

parents thinking.

Tim Long: 01:10:52

They have no idea.

Mel Renfrow: 01:10:53

I don't know.

Tim Long: 01:10:54

They did not know who Motley Crude was.

Mel Renfrow: 01:10:57

That's awesome. Yeah. Okay, guys. Well, it was great having you. Really appreciate it.

Mel Renfrow: 01:11:03

Again, you're both great resources. If anybody has any questions about scaffolding or wants want to learn more, I'm sure they can look you both up and, ask away. We appreciate it.

Tim Long: 01:11:14

Thank you. Thank you. For having us.

Dean Courser: 01:11:15

Thanks for having us and making us look better than we

Tim Long: 01:11:17

are. Yeah.